


gone down where the goblins go

by bessemerprocess



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Gen, Mirror Universe, Mirror Universe levels of violence, Sarek's A+ Parenting, here we go again
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-28
Updated: 2019-04-22
Packaged: 2019-12-25 20:03:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,854
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18268421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bessemerprocess/pseuds/bessemerprocess
Summary: Chris Pike didn't mean to get embroiled in the House of Sarek's drama, he really didn't. He swears here and now, if he ever accidentally gets stuck in a time traveling suit, he'll go back in time and figure out how to make Sarek a better father. Until that happens, he can only hope to get his crew home alive.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Vague spoilers up to s2.e10. Set in an imagined post-Season 2. Will be updated once a week.

Christopher Pike’s crew has gone insane. Well, it’s possible they already were, and the time travel and the resurrection and the near murder have just pushed them further over the edge. Admiral Cornwell had warned him when she gave him the job. 

They are supposed to be supervising the rescue and relocation of a colony ship that had crashed on Quartis III. And for the most part, that’s what they’ve done: rescued the colonists from the downed ship, rendered medical aid, set up a camp until another ship can pick up the colonists, and generally been the helpful souls Starfleet loves to portray themselves as. 

Except, Detmer, of all people, has pulled a phaser on a colonist and is yelling for Burnham. In the moment it takes Chris to get across the field of tents, Tilly has her phaser out and pointed at the colonist, too. 

None of these colonists should be a security risk. They were rescued from a colony ship that made an emergency landing halfway through its journey to a new home, and they are still going there as soon as the Federation can get them a new ship. 

The colonist in questions is dirty and worn, they all are after a trek through the swamps and four days in tent with only make shift amenities, but this one is marked out by the bloody wound to the side he’s trying to hold closed as Starfleet officers hold weapons on him. 

Not one of Chris’ people is trying to help him. Instead, Burnham draws her phaser, too. Chris is an observant man, and Starfleet likes to make these things clear, so he can see that Burnham’s got her phaser set to kill. 

“Hold up!” Chris shouts, skidding to a halt in front of this disaster waiting to happen. 

Tilly’s eyes flick to him briefly, but neither Burnham or Detmer look away from the man. 

“Captain Pike, meet Gabriel Lorca.” Michael spits the words out of her mouth with such disgust that Chris has to keep himself from reeling backwards. 

He was told Gabriel Lorca was dead, not that that’s stopped anyone lately. Still, it's a shock to find the man who terrorized his crew, on his knees in the mud of this backwater planet.

“I’d shake your hand,” Lorca drawls, all southern charm, “but these fine officers just might think I was trying to hurt their captain and shoot me.”

“I think we should shoot you, anyway,” Tilly mutters, and Chris turns to stare at her. 

“Ensign!”

“I’m not sure I disagree,” Michael says, for all the world sounding as if shooting an unarmed, injured man was the logical course of action, no matter who he was. 

“If anyone deserves to kill him, it’s Saru. I mean he did eat Saru’s people,” Detmer adds, and in that moment, Chris knows that his classified briefing was missing some very, very important details. He’ll be having words with Admiral Cornwell, after he rings the truth out of Michael. 

Lorca’s face twists up in disgust. “I didn’t eat anyone.”

“People, we will be skipping both the murder and the eating of sentients on this outing,” Chris says, summoning up some impression of a long ago teacher, stern and exhausted all at once. He slowly puts a hand on Burnham‘s shoulder. “Stand down, Commander.”

“Captain, I believe you to not be in possession of vital information in regards to this situation,” Burnham says, without lowering her phaser. Her clipped diction seems at odds with the Michael he had just been working with not thirty minutes ago.

“I think that was an understatement, Commander. Mr. Lorca, however, is wounded and unarmed. I’ll com Agent Tyler and let him know he’s in charge of the situation on planet, and Mr. Lorca can join us in sickbay.” He wonders for a moment if they will follow that order, or if whatever it is that Gabriel Lorca did to his crew is so bad that one of them will throw away their careers to open fire. 

“Sir,” Burnham says, and then hesitates, stands down. Tilly and Detmer follow. “It would be best if Agent Tyler does not know of Lorca’s presence.”

“Agreed,” Chris replies, before flipping out his communicator. Yet another story that Chris knows he’s going to be biting his lip through later. At least he won't be knee deep in mud at the time.

“Pike to Discovery. Five to beam directly to sick bay. Notify Commander Nahn her presence would be appreciated.”

“Aye aye, Captain.”  
——

“Burnham, that conversation you put off, we need to have that now,” Chris says when medical and security take over the three ring circus in sick bay. 

Michael looks at Lorca, unconscious on the biobed and surrounded by doctors trying to keep his blood in his body, and back at Chris like she’s going to refuse an order. 

“I’ll stay, Michael,” Tilly says. “I’ll go full Captain Killy if he so much as blinks.”

Chris shoots his best very concerned look at his ensign, but she doesn’t even flinch, just keeps Michael’s gaze until the other woman nods. 

The walk is silent, and he pulls her into the first empty conference room they pass. Neutral ground and all that. 

“You said that you had received a confidential briefing that first day on the bridge. What did Starfleet tell you?” Michael asks, like she knows that briefing was purer horse hockey than even Chris suspects. 

Chris inhales, and then lets the words pour out of his mouth. “Admiral Cornwell told me that Captain Lorca had become obsessed with winning the war, that he didn’t trust that Starfleet was ruthless enough to get the job done. That he was suffering from PTSD and worse from the loss of the _Buran_. That he turned the _Discovery_ into his own little military dictatorship, faked the destruction of her in combat and went to fight the war on his own, all the while telling the crew he had secret orders from Starfleet. That he planned to destroy Qo'noS from inside the planet to end the war, and that he had the bombs to do it. She told me you and Saru were able to stop the genocide, but that you couldn’t save Lorca from the Klingons.”

Chris stops for a moment, takes a deep breath and continues without looking at Michael’s face. “She said the crew was traumatized, that with normal staffing, you’d all be on medical leave. She said you were hit hardest of all, because you had had to disobey a direct order from your captain even if it was the right call this time.”

The noise that escapes Michael pulls his eyes up to hers. He’s never heard her sound so wounded and so furious, and he listened to her die once. 

“That’s it? That’s all?” Michael asks in disbelief. 

“All that I was told. I know that whatever else happened here, it must have been bad. That Lorca used his authority to hurt you all. I see it every time the crew clears way for me. When they are surprised by any kindness on my part, even now. Tilly said something once that led me to believe there was some sort of coercion…” Chris trails off, not willing to push too hard at something that might be too painful, even for Burnham, especially for Burnham. 

“Captain Gabriel Lorca died on the _Buran_. He was replaced by his doppelgänger from a universe in which humanity prizes strength and cruelty over exploration and community,” Michael says, all faked calm and purposely still hands. Spock does the exact same thing when he is enraged and trying not to show it. They must have both gotten it from Sarek. 

“So Lorca was…”

“...a monster. A monster dressed up in a Starfleet uniform, who dragged this ship and this crew down the rabbit hole to his mirror world in order to kill his Emperor and convince me to rule by his side. You’ve met his Emperor: Philippa Georgiou Augustus Iaponius Centarius.”

“I,” Chris starts, and then shakes his head, “I was not expecting that. Georgiou is from this mirror universe? She ruled it? And now she runs Section 31?” Chris says, trying to imagine how that played out. 

Chris has always believed Starfleet had his back. But this, no matter how ruthlessly practical Cornwell needed to be to win this war and save the Federation, not warning him about Georgiou is a line too far. She’s been on his ship, she and Michael and that business with the phaser, all the looks they threw at each other when they thought he wouldn’t notice. He needs to know when the fascist leaders of evil empires might be undermining his people. 

“In the other universe, she was my mother. I was,” Michael trails off again, staring at the stars. “Groomed, would be the best word for it, by her to be her heir, by Lorca to be his path to the throne. He was obsessed with me only slightly less than he was with ruling the Terran Empire.”

“And now he’s back,” Chris says, leaving the rest well enough alone. 

“Yes. I would relieve myself of duty as I am emotionally compromised, but the whole crew is emotionally compromised. There would be no one left the steer the ship.”

Well, Chris thinks, at least she can still make a joke of it. 

—-

There are a few perks of having an extremely top heavy command staff. No other ship in the Fleet has this many commanders at her captain’s disposal. Saru, Burnham, Nahn, even Reno could all do his job if needed, hell, Saru probably should be doing his job if not for Cornwell’s intervention. 

But if Michael is emotionally compromised, so is Saru, and Detmer and Tilly and every member of his bridge crew except Nahn and Spock. And Tyler, but only because Tyler doesn’t yet know Lorca has reappeared. Chris figures he only has an hour or two before ship’s gossip makes it downside. 

Cornwell was a psychologist long before she was an Admiral, and he has half a mind to tie her to a chair and make her do sessions with everyone on this ship until they are remotely okay again. His crew is even more broken than he knew, and she didn’t even give him the chance to truly help them. 

Which is how he has left his chief of security and a Vulcan science officer to deal with the planetary dignitaries and all the diplomacy she hates and he ignores, while Reno sits in his chair and the rest of Chris’ wayward kids haunt the halls outside sick bay. 

It’s also why he’s told Doc Pollard to keep Lorca sedated as long as it’s medically safe after they get him healed up. 

“Don’t be too mad at the Admiral, Captain,” Tilly says out of the blue, as the linger outside sick bay’s door. He doesn’t even remember what she’s supposed to be reporting in about. 

As much as her babbling embarrasses her, Chris finds it endearing in sort of a eager puppy kind of way. It’s also a great way of gathering information that the rest of the crew might not share with him, even now.

“Michael wouldn’t have told you, she has a thing about personal privacy, but the Admiral loved Lorca. The one from our universe, I mean, and Lorca, the other one, he sent her to be captured by Klingons and left her there with no rescue. And she didn’t know he was the evil one. She’s just as emotionally compromised as the rest of us, and she had to keep everyone else alive while we were off playing murder dress up.”

“Captain Killy?” Chris asks, hoping this story isn’t as awful as the rest, and wanting to derail whatever terrible thing will come out of Tilly’s mouth next. 

“Apparently my counterpart was very successful under the rules of her universe. We weren’t really supposed to keep them, but I know Bryce has blackmail pictures of my Captain Killy act. And worse, the Emperor has stories, lots of them, and she enjoys my discomfort. She told me so, once.” Tilly sighs and leans back against the bulkhead. “I couldn’t even get her uniform on by myself, let alone be that ruthless.”

“Nothing to be ashamed of ensign,” Chris says, before Culber interrupts them. He must have died in the other universe, Chris realizes suddenly, not during a jump as Stamets has implied. Died so far away from home, and then been trapped in a hell of an afterlife before being reconstituted into himself. It’s astonishing that the man is even upright, let alone on duty, considering. 

“Captain, we have a problem,” Culber says, words pitched not to carry. “We think Lorca is this universe’s Lorca.”

Saru clearly has heard anyway, probably heard every word Tilly said, too. “He is not the Captain?” Saru generally doesn't acknowledge that he has been captain of this ship, but here and now he is, and both Chris and Culber know it. 

“No. We know what to look for now. He’s not Lorca. He belongs here,” Culber says. Definitive, this time. 

“Well, shit,” Tilly says, and neither Chris nor Saru move to correct her. 

—-

“Captain, we have Ambassador Sarek’s ship requesting to dock.” 

“Acknowledged.” Chris is expecting Admiral Cornwell, but apparently today is not a good day to make assumptions. Thankfully Nahn and Spock have gotten the refugee situation sorted out, and his personnel are trickling back aboard ship now that there are Federation specialists to take over. He’ll have to settle for one crisis under control. 

Once Nahn is back aboard, he’ll have to ask them how they managed to do it without causing an interplanetary incident. He’s sure Nahn will have some colorful words for him, since ship’s gossip is already saying it got dicey down there for a while. 

Ship’s gossip also has taken care of spreading the fact that this Gabriel Lorca isn’t their captain, almost as quickly as the news he was on board. If he didn’t know just how well they could keep a secret, he’d be wondering how anything stayed classified around here. 

But Chris knows exactly how well the crew of the _Discovery_ can keep a secret. They’d kept him in the dark about an entire universe for months, after all. 

“You should not feel that the crew’s regard for you is in any way diminished by their keeping of this secret. We were told, we knew, that we were being asked to keep quiet in order to keep the Federation safe. And until now, that seemed the safest course of action, even in the face of your apparent curiosity,” Saru says, as the techs go through the landing checklist before the Admiral departs her shuttle. 

“Knowing what I know now, I can’t blame them, Saru.” There’s a little part of him that wants to, is angry for being kept out of the loop. More of him, however, is just angry that he wasn’t there to protect them. 

“Detmer said,” he starts, but Saru cuts him off. 

“In the other universe, threat ganglia are considered a delicacy. My people are enslaved and farmed.”

How Saru can calmly say something like that, Chris will never know. He’s sickeningly glad that he stopped from responding by the shuttle’s doors opening.

Sarek is not alone. He’s flanked on either side by his wife and Admiral Cornwell, and Chris has a terrible suspicion that things are about to get worse. 

—-

Saru helps him herd all their dignitaries to a conference room not far from Sick Bay. Sarek and Amanda are radiating tension in the most subtle manner Chris has ever seen. Clearly they are in the middle of sort of domestic, and even more clearly, they aren’t sharing with the children.Whatever it is, Admiral Cornwell seems to know all about it, and is ignoring it with all her might.

Stamets and Culber are already in the conference room, fiddling with the computer’s AV settings, and cycling through the graphs and charts that they are about to present. Chris tried not to be too shocked that they are actually doing work. Not that they’ve ever not accomplished their jobs, it’s just they have finally gotten their act back together and are having some sort of second honeymoon. It’s been a solid month of sickly sweetness and PDA. Chris would judge, but how many people’s loved ones literally come back from the dead?

“Admiral, Ambassador, Lady Amanda,” Stamets says, ushering their dignitaries into the room. 

Once everyone is seated, Stamets looks at Admiral Cornwell, but before he can say anything, she nods. 

“She’s cleared for this,” Cornwell says, with a wave of her hand like she has no idea why Starfleet agreed to this, but is resigned to the whole thing. Though if Sarek knows already, then it's probably easier to just give his wife the security clearance, too. How Sarek knows, now that is a question Chris wants answered.

“We’ve run all the tests, Admiral. Everything we can see says the man in sick bay is this universe’s Gabriel Lorca,” Culber explains. There are graphs and charts and medical data on the screen, that Chris just doesn’t have enough background for, but that Cornwell is clearly following. Culbert explains each test, each confirmation until the Admiral is nodding along. 

Sarek’s face is impassive, but Amanda is clearly still processing this whole turn of events. 

“He has been in the other universe, though,” Stamets adds, pointing to the screen and more data Chris can’t interpret. He doesn’t miss the way Cornwell looks at him out of the corner of her eye, like she trying to surmise how long he’s known. Well, she just going to have to keep guessing until she’s ready to ask outright. 

Culber fidgets with the tablet in his hands, before looking to Cornwell. “His injuries are, frankly, extensive and surpass even those we might have expect from spending time in the other universe. Doctor Pollard has him stabilized, and out of any danger, but he’s going to need considerable rehabilitation.” 

“I want to see him,” Cornwell demands, and now he can see the tremor in her hand, the way she holds herself too still. Tilly must have been right, Cornwell’s not going to question Chris, not until she’s seen Gabriel Lorca with her own eyes. 

“Doctor Pollard is waiting for us,” Culber says.

—-

Chris stays just inside Sick Bay’s doors with Sarek and Amanda, as Cornwell strides ahead. 

“Kat,” Lorca says, reverent and relieved, like a drowning man who sees a boat on the horizon. He tries, to stand, fails, and resigns himself to sitting on the side of the bio bed, looking half dead. The readouts above the bed seem to indicate that’s not far off. 

“Gabriel.” It’s so soft Chris can barely hear her, and it makes him feel like an intruder. 

She reaches out to touch to touch him. Lorca’s flinch is almost invisible, but Cornwell sees it and stops. “Gabriel,” she says again.

“Kat, I,” Lorca starts, “you’re alive.” 

He reaches out to her then, and she takes his hand. 

They speak quietly for a moment, before Cornwell waves the rest of them over, and motions Lorca to tell his story.

 

“I beamed aboard the _Buran_ , but it wasn’t mine. I didn’t even make it to the bridge. Wrong uniform, wrong insignia, wrong attitude. The transporter tech told the bridge they had an intruder and attacked me, I defeated him, beamed myself back down to the planet and just tried to survive. Took me a while to figure out why everything was wrong.”

“I got picked up by the locals, ended up on a prison planet. It was, I don’t even have words to describe it.” 

Lorca is looking at his hand in Cornwell's now, not meeting any of their curious eyes. Chris can’t really blame him. A prison planet, even here in the Federation, isn’t a nice place. In the mirror universe, Chris can’t even imagine. 

Lorca takes a deep breath to speak again, but the ship shakes under their feet and the com goes live, “Captain to the Bridge. Some asshole just opened fire, and we’re running a bit skeleton up here.” 

“On my way,” Chris says already running. He respects Reno, thinks she does great work, but she’s not who he wants in the command chair while they are taking fire. Not when half the bridge is manned by cadets and ensigns, and his crew is split between the planet, sick bay, and the shuttles ferrying colonists around. 

—-

“We have a problem, Captain.” Reno relinquishes his chair, and waves Spock over. 

The bridge is buzzing with a tightly controlled energy. They’re doing better than he’d worried, but except for Reno and Spock, there’s not another commissioned officer on the bridge. At least the enemy ship hasn’t attacked again.

Alpha shift should be right in the middle of their sleep pattern now, those of them that hadn’t just returned from thirty hours on planet dealing with muddy, angry people. It’ll take the fastest of them another two minutes to make it to the bridge. 

“Those were not photon torpedoes that hit us, Captain. My calculations indicate that the devices that hit us were not meant as a weapon, not in the traditional sense,” Spock explains. “It seems that the device is altering the ship’s quantum signature and creating what might best be described as a hollow point in space.”

“Looking at Spock’s data, I think they’re trying to create some sort of tear in the fabric of the universe to pull us through somewhere else.” Reno throws her hands wide, clearly frustrated. “Where that’d be, I don’t know.”

“I have a pretty good idea and it’s nowhere I want to go,” Chris says. The turbo lift doors hiss open, revealing Saru, who has beat Chris’ estimate by a whole minute. 

“Commander Saru, lets see if we can’t talk to these folks. Reno, see if you and Spock can’t come up with anything to disrupt the devices. And Comms, get the Admiral and the Ambassador up here. I suspect they’ll have something interesting to add to the situation.”

His officers scramble to follow his orders as he takes his seat.

“Hailing the enemy vessel,” Saru says. “We are getting interference from the devices.”

“The spatial disturbance is growing, Captain,” Spock says, and the science techs scramble behind him.

The turbolift opens, revealing a full complement: Admiral Cornwell, Ambassador Sarek, Detmer and Owosekun. Detmer and Owosekun have that rolled out of bed for an emergency look to them.

“Receiving transmission from the enemy ship,” Saru says.

“Put it on screen.”

The screen is filled by a Vulcan, a bit scragglier than Vulcans usually go for, even considering Spock’s reluctance to shave off the beard he’s grown since departing the Enterprise. Behind Chris, Sarek’s in drawn breath of surprise, might as well as a scream.

“Hello, Father,” says the Vulcan on the screen.

“Hello, Sybok.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This will update when it updates, because apparently, promising anything else ends up with me catching pneumonia and not being able to breath. SPOILERS for all of Season 2.

Michael is expecting a lot of things when she tumbles out of the turbolift on to the bridge, her brother isn’t one of of those things

Well, Spock, of course she expects to see him, he’s been aboard Discovery for months now. Sybok, though, she hasn’t seen Sybok since she was a teenager. 

The Sybok on the screen looks nothing like she’s imagined him over the years. She likes to picture him on some lush plant, full of water and friendly people. Some place where he’s not a Vulcan outcast, some place where he’s just Sybok, that guy with the pointy ears who likes to smile and help people. 

The Sybok on the screen looks like he’s walked through Vulcan’s Forge with nothing more than the clothes on his back. Not that the clothes are Vulcan. His shirt is Andorian, his jacket Karelian, his pants are Tellarite, and all of them in a state of disrepair that would have Amanda shaking her head to see. 

Michael is so focused on the image on the screen, she doesn’t even notice Sarek until he speaks. 

“Why have you fired on the Discovery?” Sarek asks, cutting the Captain off. 

She can see the tiny tightening of the zygomatic muscle that means Captain Pike is less than pleased Sarek has commandeered his bridge. Most humans would probably not notice it, but even Pike’s poker face is no match for a Vulcan, even on a good day. 

The Captain has been less than pleased with many thing in the last forty eight hours, several of which are tangentially her own fault. 

While she did not make Captain Lorca appear, she did consider executing him without even bothering to ascertain if he was the correct Gabriel Lorca. 

She did also withhold information about the other universe, though she was under legitimate orders, which perhaps means that blame lies with Admiral Cornwell, who she would like to have words with anyway. 

She does not know why Sarek was called to the ship, but her limited data set suggests she might be at fault here, too. Surely, Spock would not have encouraged his presence. 

Sybok, though, she has no explanation at all for Sybok’s presence. 

“Not so much an attack, as piracy. I have need of this ship and so I am taking it, Father. You are simply an extra perk.” Sybok sounds odd, like he’s holding himself too stiff, too Vulcan. If it was Spock, she would put it down to Sarek’s presence, but Sybok has always gone in the other direction, exuberant and persistently emotional when Sarek’s attention swung his way. 

He’s the reason she learned about pre-Reformation Vulcan philosophy at all. Evekh’s Appeal to Harmonies is still a personal favorite of hers to Sarek’s despair. Sybok, though, had disdained Surak and all his followers, even as she had memorized their words alongside those of Surak’s predecessors. 

“We are about to lose our connection, but we’ll speak on the other side.” Sybok disappears from the screen with the barest hint of a grin, as the ship begins to shake again. 

Spock’s voice breaks through the confusion on the bridge. “Captain, if we reverse the polarity of the shields and harness the harmonics of our mycelial contingent, we may be able to break Sybok’s grip in us.”

“Try it Mr. Spock,” Pike orders, turning back to the forward screen. 

Spock taps furiously at his console, bending the shields to his whim, and berating Stamets and Tilly into helping him do the same with the mycelia.

“We’re losing contact with the planet, Captain,” Reno shouts. “We’re too out of phase from them to hear us anymore.”

“Shields have been repolarized, adding mycelia harmonics now.” Spock stabs at a button on his console, but the ship does not come free of Sybok’s web. 

Instead the Discovery jolts under her feet for a long, horrible second and the planet disappears from the view screen. 

—-

“Can we get confirmation on our location?” Pike asks, once it is clear they have left their own universe. 

“It’s definitely the other universe, the quantum signatures match,” Michael replies, trying to coax more information from her console. “Just not the same place we were when we were pulled through. I cannot determine our location, but I can tell you Quartis III has never been here.”

“I’m not detecting any other ships, stations, or planets in the vicinity,” Detmer adds. 

“Sybok’s ship has not followed us, Captain,” Spock confirms. Why bother dragging them back to the other universe and not follow them home?

“Perhaps Mr. Spock’s attempt to free us has caused us to materialize in a place other than Sybok intended,” Saru suggests. 

“That’s possible,” Reno says, not even looking up from her console as she shrugs. Whatever data she’s seeing must be as inconclusive as Michael’s own, because she doesn’t offer anything else.

“In that case, let’s take this moment and try to figure out where we are, and if we can’t pick up any local news, see what the situation is.” 

“Saru, you’ve done this before. Get us outfitted for this universe in case we run into anyone we need to fool,” Pike orders, and Saru nods in acknowledgement. 

Michael does not want to wear that uniform, never wants to take off her Starfleet insignia for the Empire’s again. Needs must, though, and she’s sure she’ll be decked in gold by the end of the day. Tilly will have words when they make it back to their quarters tonight, she is sure.

“Reno, Spock, see if you can reverse engineer whatever it is Sybok just did,” Pike continues.

“Owo, Detmer, if you can figure out where we are, see if there might be anywhere nearby where we can shelter if needed.”

“Nilsson, get me a list of crew that we left on planet.”

Pike meets each officer’s eye as he sets the bridge crew in motion. She’s always respected those little touches that make him a good captain. 

“Admiral, Ambassador, Commander Burnham, if you would join me in the ready room to debrief.” 

Of course, respecting Pike doesn’t means she wants to be trapped in a room with her father and Admiral Cornwell, to talk about this current crisis. Those nine months the Discovery missed created a bond between the two of them, one that almost led to genocide, true, but also seems to have given them the ability to ferret out all the things she doesn’t want to say. 

“Saru, you have the bridge.”

—-

The ready room is perhaps the place on the ship that has physically changed the most from Lorca’s command. What was once a spartan, sterile place, is now a working office, with chairs and readouts and coffee mugs. 

The Admiral and her father are looking at each other the same way she and Saru do sometimes, communicating something without ever saying a word. 

Pike notices it too. “Spill,” is all he says, but it's enough for Admiral Cornwell to give Sarek a look that gets him talking. There’s unfinished business between the Admiral and the Captain, she knows. He’s not over being lied to about his crew. 

“In our universe, my son and I are estranged. Sybok has chosen to reject the ways of Surak. He chooses to feel his emotions as if he lived before the Reformation. The Sybok on the screen, however, is clearly from Michael’s mirror universe.” Sarek’s face may look impassive to those who have not studied the minute quirks of Vulcan facial expression, but to Michael his pain is obvious. Sybok has not spoken to their father since he left Vulcan, and barely in the years before, except to yell. 

Amanda slips into the ready room as Sarek speaks, drawn by their marriage bond, Michael is sure. She tries not to show her discomfort at her mother’s presence. They had reconciled in the other timeline, but here only Michael remembers. For Amanda there are still harsh words and hurt feelings between them. 

Cornwell nods a greeting, and Pike just looks resigned as Amanda speaks. 

“Sybok is a dear boy, but he was constrained by the requirements of Vulcan culture. He left the planet shortly after he turned seventeen.” For all that Sarek is the diplomat, it’s Amanda who is diplomatic. 

Sybok was forced out, Vulcan had no place for a Vulcan who chose to turn his back on Surak. He had been ready to go, true, but his presence was bringing more danger to their home then her own at that point, the way he was challenging logic extremists in the classroom and the streets.

“He came to us after his mother chose to undergo Kohlinar, when he was a young boy and we were newly married. Spock was born the next year. Perhaps we were not experienced enough as parents, or perhaps Sybok was always different, I do not know. He did not fit in with the other Vulcan children, no more than Spock or Michael would later. He chose not to undergo his kahs-wan, refused to allow us to find him a bond mate, and eventually rejected the teachings of Surak for the wisdom of far more ancient teachers. His departure was public knowledge.” Amanda makes it seem like something calm and logical, not the raging storm of anger and despair that it was.

She’d been fifteen and Spock eleven when Sybok left. Sarek had withdrawn in politics, his opponents sensing weakness in his son’s departure. Spock had distracted himself with his kahs-wan preparations and Amanda had taken up knitting and adding Kerelian sign language to the Universal Translator. The less said about that year, the better. 

“So, to summarize,” Cornwell adds, “Sarek is full of surprises, we don’t know enough about this universe’s Sybok to extrapolate his actions, but we can assume he’ll come looking for us, and we are currently lost in space.”

“That about sums it up,” Pike replies. Michael thinks if he were alone, he’d let his head sink into his hands for a moment, but it front of such august company, he merely stifles a sigh. 

“Burnham, you’re the only one who has been to this universe, and unlike the Ambassador and the Admiral, I haven’t had a through briefing on this place. What can we expect?”

Cornwell interrupts. “While Commander Burnham briefs you on the basics, we should continue questioning Captain Lorca, as it seems he was present in this universe until very recently and can tell us about the fall out of the Discovery’s actions when she was last here.”

—-

“Sarek’s rebels fought cleanly, logically. Even the Klingons that followed him kept away from what you and I might consider war crimes.” Lorca’s voice is haggard, the man barely sitting up on his own. They are holding this conference in Sick Bay’s long term care room in deference to him, but Dr. Pollard still had given them the side eye before warning them to call her if Lorca so much as winced. 

Not that he’s doing much else. His right arm is in a sling, he’s still wearing a post-surgical brace, and even after the dermal regenerator, he looks like a punching bag. All that and Lorca is still grating at her, like an engine harmonics just out of tune. Michael keeps expecting… something. What that something is, she doesn’t know. 

He doesn’t seem to notice her agitation, his eyes locked on Cornwell as he speaks. “Sybok believed the ends justified the means. His rebels have no mercy and give no quarter. They infiltrated the prison planet I had been taken to. I don’t know what their original plan was, but Sybok found me and hatched a new one on the fly.”

Michael tries to imagine her Sybok meeting Lorca, but she can only imagine that other man, the one she keeps thinking of as her Lorca, for all that she renounced him and all his works. 

Even battered and bloodied, this Lorca reads softer to her. Both Lorca’s are, were, intensely aware of the people around them, it’s just that this one seems to actually react to those people. What read as situational awareness in her Lorca, looks more like empathy in this one. He keeps looking at Cornwell, and then away, before choosing words that mask whatever unpleasantness he experienced.

“He stole me away from the prison camp, because he thought he could get me into the Emperor’s presence and detonate me. Thankfully the bomb his scientists made was only good for a few days. Dr. Pollard confirmed my body had dismantled it.” 

Cornwell looks stricken for a moment, and Sarek seems too curious for his own good. Pike, in the background, just looks like he’s preparing for war. Michael thinks he’s probably right. 

Lorca sounds unperturbed that Sybok has literally turned him into a bomb. It rings false to her, the way he tries to breeze by this trauma. Her Lorca might have been able to live through such an indignity without it touching him, this one she has doubts about. 

“In the chaos the Discovery caused, I fled the rebels. I had learned enough to know how to cause the transporter accident which brought me there and I had no intention of finding out how Sybok would use me in chaos. It took some time to find the right place and conditions, and some of it was only guess work on the scientists part since there wouldn’t be another Lorca to trade places with.” He shrugs, and this time it’s exactly what her Lorca would’ve done. Risking his life on his own terms had never been a problem for Lorca. 

Cornwell may have an Admiral's reserve, but right now her face is too open, too pained for anyone to miss. Michael was there when she wrote off this Gabriel Lorca, decided he must be dead. She also remember that in another timeline, Cornwell had died to save them all. Michael knows, really has always known, that Cornwell is Starfleet through and through, but Lorca is her achilles heel. 

“Didn’t work quite right. End up on the the Bemidji, pretty sure I was the reason it crashed,” Lorca says, this time looking at his own hands. He feels guilty about it, then. Michael doesn’t think the other Lorca ever felt guilty about anything. 

“The Emperor might have done a good job keeping the Federation a secret but Sybok knows and Sarek does, too. They might not be to buddy buddy, but they exchanged information regularly. Sybok has his own scientists. Not a nice bunch of people. Half of them teach at the Vulcan Science Academy on this side, but learning for the sake of learning isn’t something they do over there. And scientists aren’t known for keeping secrets, not when there are discoveries to share.”

It’s when Lorca looks at Cornwell again that Michael knows why he’s off. For this Lorca, she’s not one of the fixed points of his universe. She’s no trophy on his way to achieving his destiny. He doesn’t even know her, they’ve never really met.

“Sarek survived Harlak?” Michael asks, suddenly eager for Lorca to speak. 

“Both he and Voq survived, though they split their forces afterward. The Empire announced they had Voq’s body, but doubled up on Sarek’s bounty. Grayson wants him back, no matter how many Terrans he killed. Sarek’s more likely to take out his own ship than go willingly, and Voq knew it,” Lorca replies. 

Amanda goes pale, her distress palpable, and Sarek breaks all Vulcan custom to reach for her. Michael does not know what her parents relationship is like in this mirror universe, but in her own they are steady even in the middle of whatever dispute they have been silently having since they came aboard. 

“Why would Sybok want Discovery?” Pike asks. 

“When I left he didn’t have the technology to do such a thing,” Lorca replies. “I would have used it, if he did. I don’t know if he needed a ship that had previously made the transition to this universe, or if there is something else about the Discovery that caught his attention. Having his own Starfleet vessel would be a coup, though.”

The discussion devolves into the finer points of Terran Imperial politics, and ends quickly when Dr. Pollard appears to retrieve Lorca when his vitals start to wain. 

—-

“We have a new problem, Captain,” Owosekun says, looking uncomfortable in her Imperial uniform. “We plotted our location, and tracked down as much local news as we could. We seem to be on the edge of the alpha quadrant, in rebel territory. If someone catches sight of us, news will probably reach Sybok quickly, not to mention the rest of the rebels.”

“It may not be rebel territory for long,” Bryce adds. “Analytics has been going through every news feed we can get our hands on, it looks like Emperor Alexander Georgiou has taken the Imperial throne. There seems to be a new Terran force coming from Risa in opposition to his rule. The rebel’s information is as fragmented as the rebels themselves.”

“Do we know anything about Mr. Georgiou? Or the new Terran force?” Pike asks. 

“I’ve met him,” Michael offers. It had been her second year on the Shenzhou, back when her hair was still cropped in the style of a Vulcan child. “We took shore leave on Earth, and Captain Georgiou introduced us. He’s a professor of Andorian poetry in our universe. He did not seem remarkable in any way. Nothing that would give us insight into his Terran counterpart.”

“He may not end up being a remarkable Emperor either. From everything I’m seeing from Analytics, he’s a compromise move. Everyone is just waiting for things to settle down before they try to assassinate him.” Bryce shrugs, clearly wishing he had better intel for them. 

“So we have a mediocre Emperor without the power the hold the throne for long, a Terran faction that seems to want to keep him there for the moment, another Terran faction that might be building up to a coup, and a bunch of rebels. Unstable may not be a strong enough word to describe the situation.”

Pike turns to Spock. “Any updates on getting us back home?”

“Commander Reno has commandeered Main Engineering for further testing as Commander Trpkova is in Sickbay. So far we have not reached any conclusions.” 

That’s a fact that is going to cause repercussions. Commander Trpkova is an hermit for all that she is nominally in charge of engineering, a very territorial hermit. She already hates the spore drive and having strangers tromp through her domain is going to result in complaints for months, especially if Reno moves anything. If Trpkova wasn’t a genius, Starfleet would’ve stuck her on some backwater, but it was to Lorca’s benefit that she didn’t question him and she was good enough at her job that Pike hadn’t replaced her yet. 

“We have located an asteroid field two systems over, which might help disguise our presence from anyone looking for us. So far, scans show no indications that anyone is in the area,” Detmer adds. 

“Let’s do that, then. Keep the Discovery’s presence under wraps for as long as we can.” Pike turns to Saru. “Keep looking for signs anyone else thinks this asteroid field is a good hiding place. The rest of you, continue as you were.”

Sarek, who had returned to the bridge with Pike, leaving Cornwell with Lorca, and her mother elsewhere, glides up to her station. 

“Circumstances permitting, your mother and I would invite you and your brother to dine with us tonight,” Sarek says, before she can escape. 

“Yes, father.” Of course Sarek would make her play messenger to Spock. He’s only five meters away, on the same bridge, but he wouldn’t be Sarek if he was willing to make the first move with his son. 

—-

There is nothing like the lingering threat of parental involvement to bond siblings. 

She and Spock have resolved many of their issues, and have even taken to playing chess when the opportunity provides itself. Spock, however, has not previously ensconced himself in her room to complain, if logically, about their parents. 

She, too, would prefer they are on the same page before the parental inquisition begins. 

“You are avoiding father,” Michael points out as she moves her pawn. 

“It is logical. Decreased contact leads to decreased conflict.”

“And you are still mad about Sybok. Our Sybok, I mean,” she says. 

“I am not mad about Sybok. I am concerned that father is not considering the situation logically, and that a version of Sybok that is willing to converse with him may cause him to become emotionally compromised.” He moves his bishop to threaten her queen. 

“Spock.” The eyebrow she raises at him is an artifact of their father, and it always has an effect when it comes to her brother. 

“Michael.” He’s not going to give an inch. 

Sybok has been a touchy subject between since long before Michael had purposely torched their relationship in hopes of keeping Spock safe. The pure blooded heir who threw all his father’s dreams away, held up as a cautionary tale for the misfit children who followed. 

“Father and mother seem at odds.” She has no other words for the subtle tension that surrounds their parents. 

“Mother has been offered a visiting professorship on Deneb. In light of recent events, she is considering accepting the position. It would be a separation from father for at least a year, or perhaps more permanently. Did she not tell you?” Spock asks. Curiosity is one thing Spock has never repressed. 

“Amanda has not spoken to me. She and I argued while you were… misplaced. I told her what happened between us, and she grew very angry at me. I cannot blame her if she would prefer not to see me.” Michael takes Spock's rook, and twirls it between her fingers. 

“We have spoken of you predilection for blaming yourself for things that are not your fault. I have forgiven you, and I suspect you were unfairly harsh when describing your actions to mother.” She will be in check in four moves. 

“Still.”

“When she discovers we have reconciled, she will reconcile with you, as well. She allowed father to invite us both for dinner, after all.” Spock’s certainty is a living thing, causing hope to buoy up in her chest. 

“I see the logic in your supposition, brother,” she replies, falling back on those childhood patterns. “Something else is on your mind, though.”

“I have had visions of the future. Not all of them were of the end of all life. Some were simply the end of one life. I have no time reference for them, but as much as I logically understand we shall all die, it is different to view such deaths. And those things that may be worse than death,” Spock says. 

“Someday, I will be called upon to help Captain Pike end his suffering,” Spock admits. “It weighs on me. I do not want him to die. I do not want to mistake the situation that we are in now for some piece of my future vision, either. “

Michael reaches out for him, and for once he lets her. 

The moment is lost when the door opens to reveal Tilly in full Captain Killy regalia. “I hate this uniform, I can’t even take it off by myself, but Saru was all like, ‘Ensign Tilly, it may be imperative that you reprise your role as our erstwhile Captain at any moment,’” she says, before she notices Spock. “Oh, hi, Lt. Spock, I’m sorry I interrupted.”

“It is no problem, Ensign.” Spock stands. “I shall see you for dinner,” he confirms, before exiting her cabin. 

“Your brother hates me,” Tilly says, struggling out of the golden breastplate. Michael goes to help her, making quick work of the thing so that Tilly can flop back on her bed. 

“He doesn’t hate you. He just tries to out Vulcan the Vulcans too often for his own good.”


End file.
